Voting cheats?

[Falkor]

I'd love to know how a shard with 100 average players can hit 14,000 votes in 12 days by legitimate means.  Even if they had their max online voting every day, they'd be at 3000 and not over 4 times that figure.  The number 2-ranked shard isn't far behind in their incredible "voter" turnout.

Last month, a brand new shard with one average online went from zero votes to 250 in one day, where it sat for most of the month before gaining one more vote right at the end. 

It looks like someone has figured out how to manipulate the voting script, or they've written something that places proxy votes through TOR or something similar.  It's a shame that people would go to such means to be ranked at the top when regular voting by their real players would put them there anyway. 

Thoughts?



Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:286

[Red Squirrel]

That does seem odd.  I've been wanting to add a captcha or other similar system to at least make it harder to bot vote.  It won't really stop it completely though but it will make it harder.    I'll have to look into what are the best options to detect any kind of bot, proxy etc voting.

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:287

[Bpope03]

its called bots bro. If you are an old school UO player trying to get a legitimate idea for a free shard to play on based off votes, go off another website where they use captcha to block bot votes. IMO Red Squirrel is just looking for all the extra hits from bots to put $ in his pocket from the ads. Well played red squirrel, well played.

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:289

[Bpope03]

That does seem odd.  I've been wanting to add a captcha or other similar system to at least make it harder to bot vote.  It won't really stop it completely though but it will make it harder.    I'll have to look into what are the best options to detect any kind of bot, proxy etc voting.

I vote on 4 other websites for uo shards, yours is the only one where the #'s go outrageous.

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:290

[Red Squirrel]

its called bots bro. If you are an old school UO player trying to get a legitimate idea for a free shard to play on based off votes, go off another website where they use captcha to block bot votes. IMO Red Squirrel is just looking for all the extra hits from bots to put $ in his pocket from the ads. Well played red squirrel, well played.

Truth be told, the money made off this site is very minimal, we're talking orders of maybe $10 per month though the ads are not split up right at the moment so can't tel what each individual site does, but all my sites combined do maybe $100 every 3-4 months. The main reason I originally got the site is that I did not want to see the uogateway domain turn into some kind of parked page spam site where nobody can ever use it again, like what typically happens if a domain is left to expire.  I never even made back the $600ish it cost for the domain, let alone the server operating costs, or my time spent on the site.



Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:291

[reindhart]

The only reason votes are so ridiculously high on this site from botters is that its proven shards can get away with it

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:292

[Bpope03]

6 feet under, gotta throw them under the bus.

http://www.xtremetop100.com/ultima-online Red Squirrel, I apologize if for pasting another voting site, but this is hypocrisy. 6feet under is #22 on that voting site. "THIS WEBSITE DOES NOT TRACK VOTES CORRECTLY, IF YOUR NOT A PREMIUM MEMBER YOU VOTES WILL NOT ADD UP, THE VOTING STATS ARE RIGGED oUR SERVER IS ACTIVE AND NOT FULL OF BOTS WE DONT HAVE TO FAKE OUR STATS" but you use bots on uogateway.....

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:293

[Red Squirrel]

Not too sure what's going on here, is 6 feet under claiming that that particular site is not tracking votes, or that we arn't?  Though clearly they are probably one of the sites using bots given by the amount of votes they have here. 

Been busy because it's summer and we only get like 2 months of it here, but I DO want to look into this, and it will be rather by surprise once the changes go in, so the ones boting will most likely get caught quickly.  I have a few ideas. It can go a few ways, those who are suspected of boting will simply be shamed, via some kind of indicator, or banned.  Personally I like the shaming route better, because these sites that try to cheat systems are simply going to go do it on other top site lists anyway. May as well reveal them.  The key is to ensure that whatever I do to detect it is accurate.  If people are very diligent about getting their members to vote every day then that's fine with me, but if they're using scripts then that's a whole other story and unfair.

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:294

[tangar]

What we have to do with cheaters? Ban them. Simple.

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:311

[Red Squirrel]

Easier said than done, the issue is finding a good way of detecting cheaters, and all cheaters, not just some.  If I find one cheater, and not another then it's not fair.  Need to ban them all or not ban them at all. Right now I admit, it's the wild west. I see stuff in the logs and KNOW that cheating is going on but that's because they're making it ridiculously obvious.  Smarter cheaters may not be making it as obvious. 

I have a few things in mind, one is to display more stats, and perhaps even more stat history.  Leave it up to the community to decide if the stats are BS or not.  If you see a shard with 900 players online practically at all hours of the day, 50000 votes, then go on their site and their forums have like 2 people, then you know they're BSing.  People talk and the cheater shards eventually are rather well known.  Or heck, someone signs up for one and finds that there's nobody anywhere.  Yo would expect a shard that states they have 900 players to have lot of people roaming about in Luna etc.  So as these shards get called out they eventually fail. 

For vote cheats, which I guess was the original topic, that will be easy enough with a captcha, I should get on that, just something I never get around to doing.    Of course that won't stop manual proxy voting, but that still requires a decent amount of work, so it's not as effective as a bot. 

But yeah I've kinda been neglecting this site, I do want to make lot of improvements eventually.

Archived topic from UOG, old topic ID:96, old post ID:335